“In late modernity, authoritarian movements have arisen again that seek to ideologically combine an organic and holistic natural-social order, a purified nationality, a primeval mysticism, and a belief in a superlative civilisation that was created by an ancestral community of blood.” (Bhatt, 2000: 589) Post-9/11 sections of the British Left have championed the term ‘Islamophobia’ […]
“It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois viewpoint has never advanced beyond this antithesis between itself and this romantic viewpoint, and therefore the latter will accompany it as legitimate antithesis up […]
“It wasn’t until some years later – when I realized the full scope and dimension of the massacres – that I comprehended the concealed nature of the ice lurking deep beneath the hypnotic and dynamic femininity of Gandhi’s non-violent exterior.” Lenny, in Bapsi Sidhwas’s Cracking India The Partition of India in August 1947 had, at its […]
This is a full recording of my session at the All The Rage conference on Saturday 28th February 2015. See also, my post, I’m with motion. and my podcast, Lessons from India: towards a global analysis of sexual violence.
Globalisation – i.e., the time-space compression of the past twenty to twenty five years – is dialectical. A new phase of capitalism has given birth to contradictory tensions that have long been pregnant and kicking. Globalisation is an interplay of forces demanding the future and forces heralding the past. It straddles both static and motion. I’m with motion. […]
So what might “Zariya” – a composition by India’s foremost composer AR Rahman, which brings together a traditional chant by Nepalese Buddhist nun, Ani Choying, traditional lyrics sung by Jordanian Farah Siraj, and a Hindi chorus – tell us about globalisation? As an audio-visual cultural offering, readily available via social media, it is an exquisite […]
Here is a podcast based on the lead-off that I gave at the Ideas for Freedom conference on the weekend of 22nd/23rd June 2013, I hope you find it of some political and intellectual use: (Image from Wikimedia Commons: December 22, students protest the rising violence against women, Raisina Hill/ Rajpath)
Anaemic On A Bike 